I’ve known for a while that when I was little, one of the reason’s I had such a drive to excel academically was to get love and attention. What I didn’t realize was that this belief—learning being a critical way to get love—was still running the show!

The spiral of silence is that we stay silent with our opinions that we sense are in the minority. As a result, we stay silent on many things: what our opinions and emotions are, especially about contentious issues like climate change.

Climate change progress continues to be too slow. Many scientists say it’s inevitable that we’ll overshoot the goal of 1.5 degrees Celsius. What can we do? In this blog I share some of my process in being with eco-anxiety, and new research that suggests the answer may be to welcome catastrophic thinking. To feel, think and act within the realities of the climate crisis. Luckily, Focusing can help with that.